Mná na hÉireann Kate Bush Mná na hÉireann (Ó Riada / Ó Doirnin Arranged by Bush, Lunny, Trench) Kate Bush Vocals Nollaig Ni Chathasaigh Solo Violin Laoise Kelly Irish Harp The Irish Studio Orchestra Strings Arranged & conducted by Fiachra Trench

It was an eighteenth-century northern poet, Peadar Ó Doirnín, who wrote the lyrics to 'Mná na hÉireann'. Ó Doirnín was one of many scholars, poets and scribes to come from this culturally rich part of the country and his work has survived to appear in modern Irish anthologies. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the original air which accompanied these lyrics and has disappeared without trace. Seán Ó Riada, the man responsible for preserving and reviving so much of Irish song and music, wrote the air which now accompanies 'Mná na hÉireann' in 1968 to commemorate the bicentennary of Ó Doirnín. 'Úr-Chnoc Chein Mhic Cáinte', another work by Ó Doirnín, is still sung in Donegal today, though again to a new air.

Mná na hÉireann

Biography Kate Bush is a multi-faceted artist whose creativity extends to the visual as well as the aural. Born in Kent, England, to an Irish mother and an English father, she taught herself to play the piano and started writing songs around the age of ten. At sixteen she signed with EMI Records, left school and moved to London to study contemporary dance before releasing her first single 'Wuthering Heights' in 1978. After her highly successful - and only - tour in 1979, she became more involved with producing, eventually building her own recording studio, and she is now one of the few women to take full creative control in the studio. All of her albums have reached the top three in the UK. Kate released a short musical film, 'The Line, the Cross and the Curve', in 1993 - revealing yet another aspect of her Renaissance artistic nature.

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